Bishop Hill The peer review game
Feb 19, 2014 Journals There is an interesting letter in Nature this week. In-Uck Park of the University of Bristol and his colleagues have adopted something of a game-theoretic approach to try to understand aspects of the peer review process.
The objective of science is to advance knowledge, primarily in two interlinked ways: circulating ideas, and defending or criticizing the ideas of others. Peer review acts as the gatekeeper to these mechanisms. Given the increasing concern surrounding the reproducibility of much published research, it is critical to understand whether peer review is intrinsically susceptible to failure, or whether other extrinsic factors are responsible that distort scientists’ decisions. Here we show that even when scientists are motivated to promote the truth, their behaviour may be influenced, and even dominated, by information gleaned from their peers’ behaviour, rather than by their personal dispositions. This phenomenon, known as herding, subjects the scientific community to an inherent risk of converging on an incorrect answer and raises the possibility that, under certain conditions, science may not be self-correcting. We further demonstrate that exercising some subjectivity in reviewer decisions, which serves to curb the herding process, can be beneficial for the scientific community in processing available information to estimate truth more accurately. By examining the impact of different models of reviewer decisions on the dynamic process of publication, and thereby on eventual aggregation of knowledge, we provide a new perspective on the ongoing discussion of how the peer-review process may be improved.
Which is a pretty interesting result, and one which I think will ring true with many readers at BH at least. Here's an excerpt from the conclusions:
Science may ...not be as self-correcting as is commonly assumed, and peer-review models which encourage objectivity over subjectivity may reduce the ability of science to selfcorrect. Although herding among agents is well understood in cases where the incentives directly reward acting in accord with the crowd (for example, financial markets), it is instructive to see that it can occur when agents (that is, scientists) are motivated by the pursuit of truth, and when gatekeepers (that is, reviewers and editors) exist with the same motivation. In such cases, it is important that individuals put weight on their private signals, in order to be able to escape from herding. Behavioural economic experiments indicate that prediction markets, which aggregate private signals acrossmarket participants, might provide information advantages.Knowledge in scientific research is often highly diffuse, across individuals and groups, and publishing and peer-review models should attempt to capture this.We have discussed the importance of allowing reviewers to express subjective opinions in their recommendations, but other approaches, such as the use of post-publication peer review, may achieve the same end.
Reader Comments (100)
HaroldW: "So don't take the Wiki article as gospel"
And, where anything remotely linked to climate or atmosperic physics might be concerned, always check the edit history to see when the dirty paws of William Connolley (with an E) were biasing and corrupting it.
Adding "-Wikipedia" in the Google search box removes results from that site which are generally flawed for one reason or another. Other sources can be assessed for credibility, Wikipedia doesn't have any. See Wikipediocracy.com for more.
ThinkingScientist, NW - I've found that for non-controversial subjects, Wikipedia is generally pretty good. In this case, it looks like someone wrote an undergraduate-level explanation which is mostly right. I think it's a valid approach, much as we learn in spirals: first give an introductory-level description as an overview, which will satisfy most first-time lookers. Then give some equations for more mathematically-inclined folks looking deeper into it. Unfortunately, nobody's bothered to add the next layer, including the correction to Stokes' Law.
However, for controversial subjects, the best one can hope for from Wiki is an outline of the points of contention, and some links or enough information to use Mr. Google as the next step. And then one must wade through the tendentiousness of those sources.
Zed and follow-ups removed.
Don't forget tonight's Moral maze on Radio 4 tonight. Flooding, climate change etc.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03vgnjs
HaroldW:
Thanks for setting me, and the record straight.
GlennD
97% of climate scientists agree that the herd mentality isn't an issue in Climate Science.
...always check the edit history to see when the dirty paws of William Connolley (with an E) were biasing and corrupting it.
Feb 19, 2014 at 5:27 PM ThinkingScientist
I received "a personal message" from Jimmy Wales asking for money to support Wikipedia.
I replied with a personal message to Jimmy Wales saying that Wikipedia's distorted entries on anything to do with climate, thanks to Connolley, outweighed the positive value of Wikipedia. Therefore I would not be contributing.
I got a reply saying:
1. Jimmy Wales is not involved in the day-day running of Wikipedia (so would not be receiving my message, presumably).
2. The Connolley issue had been dealt with.
Charlie, IMHO you have hit the nail on the head. Sadly, the idiot's circus of 'computer modelling' has taken over from actual physical modelling. I learnt many years ago that even the most intelligent among us require physical, hands-on models so we can actually see and understand the actuality of things; the complexity of the draining of a flood plain is almost beyond imagining, and having to rely on the output of computer models where 'garbage in' can so easily lie hidden before translating into 'garbage out' seems too similar to faith to me. The frequent pleas from the UKMO leadership for more and better computers, as others have said, means that bigger mistakes will be made much faster.
It is no coincidence that for young children to assimilate complex mathematical ideas, the manipulation of concrete materials are an absolute requirement. Adults have the same needs given suficient complexity in the concepts they are attempting to understand.
I agree with other critics of Alan the Brit. Actually I could hardly do otherwise because the facts are against him. There is no point in criticising climate scientists for ignoring evidence that does not fit their theories, if you ignore historical facts.
Allan M
There is absolutely nothing wrong with "having a feel for things"…
Feb 19, 2014 at 10:42 AM | Mike Jackson
My point exactly, though I did not elaborate, as this was discussed recently on another thread.
My father's siblings and my paternal grandfather were mostly time-served craftsmen (& woman) of the old school. Although my father decided, in a fit of post-war idealism (after spending the duration building planes), that his son was not going to have to get his hands dirty to make a living (I still got them dirty for fun instead), I grew up with this sort of thing.
A 'feel' for things can also help spot and check for silly answers. I suspect that so many nowadays will trust any answer as long as it comes out of a computer.
Alexander K. Thank you. I think with these type of blogs it is important to do the following:-
1. Try to explain what has gone wrong and why. The actual causes may have taken place many decades ago and the evolution of the problem may be very complicated.
2.Suggest practical, cost-effective and timely solutions .
Allan M: something that I fully agree with. Call it intuition, if you will; it is something that most people have, but most people ignore – after all, for most of us, it has been trained out of us (my personal example was being able to “see” the correct answer of quite complex maths at school, but unable to show the required calculations; that was very effectively “trained” out, and I can no longer do it).
I suspect that it is actually subconsciously seeing developing patterns or behaviour in a multitude of small, subtle, possibly not even obviously connected clues. Perhaps an example would be how great actors (and good comedians) use it, by the precise length of a pause – a millisecond each way could ruin the wanted effect – or by a little twitch of a facial muscle or intonation of voice. But, these are just ham-fisted examples of what “intuition” picks up, as we may not even be aware of what we are seeing as we “feel” it is right (or wrong).
If you were designing a system of independent audit for scientific papers from scratch today would it look like 'peer review'?
Everyone agrees that standards of audit, transparency and use of technology has made a massive difference to the levels of confidence for investors in industry. Corporations are under constant scrutiny, accountability is demanded by shareholders, penalties are high for falsification and independent verification is normal. It seems that even scientists are embarrassed by the buddy review process but what are our national institutions doing? What is the science and technology committee at Westminster doing?
Vested interest and cosy relationships are blocking progress. Science has become far too comfortable with the status quo and therefore resistant to change and real rigour. Better audit would identify and root out the lazy academics who are quite happy to churn out poor work at the tax payers expense. We don't know how much of tax funded academia is misdirected, wasteful, unbalanced, political or just plain rubbish because there hasn't ever been any real scrutiny. Those scientists who are doing valuable work need to be properly recognised and encouraged to do more.
We cannot expect change to come from within - it is now time for politicians to take action and stir things up. Science establishments need to shake off their Victorian attitudes and get to grips with the ipad generation. How can we be innovative as a nation and compete on the world stage when our science is controlled by a conveyor belt of establishment types who wouldn't be out of place in a Pall Mall club?
The scientific principle needs to be taken off the shelf, dusted down, cleaned up and given to a new generation of academic entrepreneurs. Break the establishment, get rid of the cronyism, free the science.
Martin A: "2. The Connolley issue had been dealt with"
Ah, so that's ok then. Of course it is. Thats why Connelley's name still appears in the Wiki edit lists, grubby paws sacrificing science on the altar of anthropogenic global warming.
As someone who actually is an occasional peer reviewer, the idea that peer review is some form of scientific quality assurance or guarantee is laughable. To then take it a further step and base government policy on it is naive irresponsibility of the highest order.
I have an email from the BBC in response to a complaint about a graph (from Marcott 2013). BBC dismissed the complaint by saying the graph is in a peer reviewed paper.
Peer review is pointless crap. Government policy should only be based on science that can be fully replicated independently by people whose scientific view is hostile to that of the original authors. Otherwise it becomes a love in fest of sychophantic grant teat suckers following the herd and the whims of the politics.
And all data and code should be provided. To base government policy on anything other than double blind testing is an invitation for disaster and corruption. If the standard for medical trials requires double blind testing (and not just publishing in peer or pal review) then why is it acceptable for such enormous, expensive and far reaching policy decisions on global warming to only require such a weak scientific standard?
I always thought peer review was no more than a defence mechanism so that journals didn't fall flat on their faces publishing rubbish which might be detected as such by experts current in the field. There has been oodles of peer reviewed published work that's been impossible to reproduce, has used invalid analysis or has been otherwise exposed as unsound.
I find the idea that's been peddled of late, that peer review is tantamount go the Almighty's stamp that whatever it is, is verified, completely strange. Maybe it's a point of view that's leaked into climate science from the arts, or the other err, sciences, political science and management science etc?
Then there's that other interesting field of endeavour, pseudoscience, which appears to be taking some claimed experimental results, a survey or whatever, and building a whole edifice on it, without ever really checking the supposed basis.
Mydogsgotnonose
Looking at the graphs in Hansen et all 1981, I was impressed with their success in hindsight.
Fig 1 gives a mixing +thermocline value of 0.75C for the temperature rise since 1880.
The actual values from GISS are a 5 year average for 2000 of 0.7. If you go to the 1998 peak the rise is 0.8C.
Fig 6 gives 0.6C for the rise from 1950 to 2010. The actual figure is 0.7C.
If anything, the actual values are higher than the paper's mid- range predictions. Hansen et al1981 was actually quite conservative!
Robert Christopher
Here is an immediate correction. You write
2) review by friendly colleagues, to eliminate dreadful gaffs, spelling mistakes and school boy errors in grammar
3) review by not-so-friendly colleagues, to eliminate subtle gaffs
A 'gaff', dear schoolboy, is a device in fishery to assist taking a catch from the water. It is hardly subtle, more brutal.
A 'gaffe' dear learned scientist seeking the truth, is a social slip of the tongue.
See the power of instant online review?
Please keep me as other than a not-so-friendly colleague.
Entropic man (12:23 AM) -
I'm not quite sure why you're getting so worked up about Hansen et al. (1981), which basically claims that CO2 has an effect, and that ECS is 2.8 K/doubling, give or take a factor of 2. In other words, not much different from the Charney report of 1979.
What I found interesting was the first bit of the summary: "The global temperature rose by 0.2°C between the middle 1960's and 1980..." Why is that interesting? Look at the bottom curve of figure 3, which represents global temperatures (5-year running means). It's apparent that -- according to the record of the time -- temperatures were pretty much unchanged from ~1960 to ~1980 except for a large dip in the mid-60s due to the Agung eruption. So the lead statement in the summary is ... a cherry-pick.
Hi All,
A little late to the party, as I needed to get hold of a book at home. This is "Inventing the Flat Earth - Columbus and Modern Historian", by Jeffrey Burton Russell, Praeger Publishers, 1991, ISBN 0-275-95904-X. It's been well received, for example in the New York Times Book Review. In summary, "... it became widespread conventional wisdom from 1870 to 1920 as a result of the 'war between science and religion' when for many intellectuals ... all religion became synonymous with superstition and science became the only legitimate source of truth. ... Our determination to believe the Flat Error arises out of contempt for the past and our need to believe in the superiority of the present" (cited in the foreword, p x).
My favourite example demonstrating a clear medieval understanding of the roundness of the earth is Dante's Divine Comedy. No one can suggest this was anything other than hugely popular and acclaimed - no obscure academic tome this - nor was Dante persecuted by the Church (despite putting plenty of clerics in Hell for that matter too!).
The Divine Comedy has been described as very early (if not the earliest) science fiction. The Inferno is in some ways a Journey to the Centre of the Earth. And at the very centre of the Earth Dante and Virgil encounter - well, Satan himself. In order to escape, they need to climb past Satan's body and out the other side. But as they get past his navel (sorta), instead of climbing downwards, Dante suddenly senses that he is starting to climb upwards again. They have passed the very centre of the earth, and the sense of downwards is always towards the centre of the earth. I find this remarkable. They didn't have a theory of gravity, but they had a reasonable idea of how it must operate.
When Dante and Virgil emerge from their rather long climb out, they arrive at the island of Purgatory, which is situated directly on the opposite side of the earth from Jerusalem. Throughout the second book, Dante repeatedly describes the implications of being on the other side of the earth, particularly with regards to daylight/night-time and the rising and setting of the stars and planets as seen from the island as opposed to his long lost home city of Florence.
The medievals knew the earth was round and enjoyed speculating about the implications. And such knowledge was not restricted to the intellectual elite. Climate sceptics weren't the first to be repeatedly slandered by the scientific establishment.
HaroldW: Note also that in Figure 3 of Hansen_1981 the temperature data of the day shows a steep rise in temperature of +0.45 degC over the period 1880 - 1940. Hansen models a CO2 effect over the same period of +0.1 degC, giving a natural increase of +0.35 degC over 60 years. So according to Hansen's own figures, over that period natural effects must be 3x larger than CO2 effects. And he even admits it in hard print:
(my bold).So for Hansen's prediction to the year 2000 to have any merit we have to assume that all natural effects (of whatever sign) must amount to zero over the prediction period. But we already know from Hansen's own data in his own paper that over a 20 year period a natural rise of about +0.12 degC over 20 years is entirely possible. So Hansen's model must be flawed.
Perhaps more likely (and there was a recent paper indirectly showing this) is that warming is CO2 + ENSO, perhaps in equal measure, over the period 1980 - 2000. Coupled with a lower climate sensitivity than used by Hansen, we might have a model that makes sense. Taking only half of Hansens increases attributed to CO2 would give a natural background 1880 - 1940 of +0.4 degC, or 0.13 degC over 20 years. Half of Hansen's CO2 increase for 1980 - 2000 would be about 0.15 degC, so we would get about the 50:50 proportions and a temperature increase over the whole period of about 0.45+0.13+0.15 = +0.73 degC, pretty close to what the temperature record seems to suggest (if using adjusted records).
But no apocalpyse.
Harold W
I'm not surprised that Hansen et al 1981 and the Charney report agreed. After all' they were written in a similar time frame using similar data.
They are also among the earliest forecasting studues to give numerical predictions. The good agreement between theory and observation over 30 years vakidates them. One of the big weaknesses of the moderate sceptic case is the lack of anything to match that predictive ability.
Thinking scientist
Look at Fig 7. That shows the range of natural variation relative to the forecast and hindcast curves. the earlier years are modelled as caused by CO2 and are within the natural range. On that evidence alone you cannot say whether they are natural or anthropogenic without supplying evidence for an alternate mechanism.
All that Hansen said was that the anthropogenic change was smaller than the possible range of natural variation. I doubt he had enough data to say more.
Northcote Parkinson ridiculed the vast increase in the number of academic journals . As very little academic work is original, many journals have to justify their existence by accepting papers that perhaps 50 years ago would never be published.
20or so years ago research was undertaken to assess how much of the work undertaken by laboratories was actually original : that was not being done by any other organisation. Top of the list was the MRC Lab at Cambridge with 40% of it's work actually original.
Until we return to a situation where perhaps not more than 15-20% go to university plus we ensure subjects such as environmental science demands people with A Level maths, physics and chemistry, we will have the problems of research producing ambiguous results which can be easily politicised . When Darwin published his Origin of Species " it was the result of 30 years work.
The idea that someone with grade C or D A Levels in Biology and Geography attending an ex-poly to read environmental science is the same standard as someone who has maths, physics or chemistry and geography with a mixture of A* and As is ridiculous . What the expansion of universities has done is to provide employment for mediocre middle class academics who justify their position by producing vast amounts of poor quality research and having it published in poor quality journals. Poor research often produces unclear and ambiguous results which can be easily politicsed .
When it comes to the flooding in Somerset , how many of the environmental science and geography academics and those with such degrees have sufficient understanding of fluid mechanics and sediment transport, to understand and therefore calculate, the results of the decisions not to dredge?
Science is self-correcting, sure.
But are the people calling themselves climate 'scientists', actually doing science? Or something else?
Like Harold W - who feels feels that the inability by sceptics of the obviously failing models' predictive ability, to come up with something better, means their criticisms are not valid.
Katisha -
I have seen an argument which runs something like, "Skeptics complain that GCMs are too sensitive to greenhouse gases. But they haven't come up with a "cooler" GCM which better matches the observations. Until they do, we have to take the models as 'best evidence' because they're all we've got."
I disagree with this. While it's better to offer an improvement when criticizing, it's not essential to the validity of the criticism. Even the AR5 WG1 wrote that the GCMs were over-estimating warming, making an ad hoc adjustment to the near-term warming predicted by GCMs. [They didn't adjust end-of-century predictions, though.]
Harold W
It should be easy enough to compose a sceptic model.
The code for NASA's model E is open source and can be downloaded from this page.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/
There are coders posting on BH who should be able to modify it without breaking sweat.
Criticising existing models is easy, producing a better model would be harder but much more convincing.
Harold W
A successful sceptic model would do these things at least as well as the GCMs.
1) Correctly hindcast from 2013
2) Correctly predict future temperatures for the near and longer term.
3) Generate low climate sensitivity.
4) Do it independently of increasing CO2.
The point Myopic and Harold seem so intent on missing, is that
- the consensus models are clearly off the rails
- and to make that observation, one does not first need to come up with a better model.
If you are sick and the treatment your doctor prescribes doesn't work, you don't need to first come up with a better treatment before pointing out your doctor's failures.
And I see Harold is still stuck on trying to misrepresent sceptics - who are essentially agnostic - as active CO2 deniers, whose groundless faith is every bit as strong as those of their opposite number - the official alarmist truebeliever 'consensus'.
Charlie 1.56pm
The science is also grossly distorted by the Research Assessment exercise into university departments, by which you get Brownie points for the quantity of your publications, and not for the quality. If anyone these days suggested it might take them 30 years to research and develop their work into an academic book, they would be put out to grass after five years.
Messenger,
I agree. RAE was set up to weed out those poor academics , perhaps 10-20% of the total . It has become a nightmare.
The expansion of universities and academic journals has been highlighted by
1. Northcote Parkinson
2. A Sampson 2 Changing Anatomy of Britain 1982- see chps 7 and 8. Also his Anatomy of Britain Today 1965 is worth reading.
Academia is like a neglected garden: some is doing well, some needs drastic pruning , other parts need to be dug up and replanted and the fertiliser applied where needed .
We have 45 years of post Robbins reforms and 20 years since polys became universities. I would suggest that the massive expansion of arts, social science and environmental degrees at poor academic establishments has taken money away from the top universities and those undertaking research in engineering , physical and chemical sciences and technology. The change of polys to universities has meant that many HNC Technician jobs have been changed into graduate jobs , even they do a similar role . All that has happened is that the graduates have large debts and more taxpayers funds spent on employing mediocre academics. the re-creation of polys offering evening and saturday study, day release, thin sandwich and inter net teaching will enable people to be educated to degree level while in work. This will save money and removed the need for all degree giving institutions to offer halls of residents. The following engineers
studied part time
RJ mitchell- Spitfire
Chadwick- Lancaster
Barnes Wallis - R100 airframe, wellington bomber, bouncing bomb, earthquale boms, swing wing technology.
So let us spend money where it will do the nation some good.
When it comes to flooding, 1 in 10 scale physical models are required based upon at least 10 years of extensive monitoring. The teams involved will need statisticians of equal calibre as used in the drug industry/medicine: fluid mechanics expert of the offshore construction industry, and programmers of the same standard as used in the defence industry.
The request to produce a better model is silly beyond belief.
When during Live Aid Phil Collins hit the wrong key on the piano, millions of people understood it perfectly well. The overwhelming majority of them had no music training and did not go on to produce and sell megahits.
It is usually extremely easy to see there is something wrong. It is much more difficult to get it right, and usually left to the professionals. If they are unable to correct the issue, it is their fault and nobody else's.
Entropic man-
Yes, I, along with many others, could modify the code easily enough, but that's hardly the tricky bit, is it? The difficult question is identifying the erroneous or missing mechanism(s). There's a reason why folks like Rougier and Edwards (to take only the ones most familiar to readers here) are among hundreds of full-time modelers. And with all their effort, they haven't found the philosopher's stone just yet.
On the other hand, one can easily adjust a low-degrees-of-freedom model (not a GCM). Take, for instance, the MIT 2-D model used by Forest among others, which contains three key parameters. In a recent paper, Nic Lewis identified the best fit for those parameters to match the historical record. That might satisfy your desire for a "skeptical" prediction.
With respect to your second post, I don't understand why you listed criterion #4. I have never contended that temperature change is independent of CO2. Could you perhaps clarify why you added that point? Thanks.
Tomcat-
In your first post (8:22 AM), you seem to think that I disagree with your two points. In fact I agree with both; and I have no idea why you should think that I would object to them. My post (Feb 20, 2014 at 6:10 PM) explicitly says that I don't agree that a counter-proposal is required in order to have a valid criticism. Entropic man wrote that "a better model would be ... more convincing", and I would agree with him that far.
In your second post (8:29 AM), you say that I am trying to "misrepresent sceptics ... as active CO2 deniers." Again, I have no idea why you should believe that of me. Perhaps you could quote a part of one of my comments which gives you that impression.
I don't mind defending my assertions (or correcting them if mistaken), but it's strange to be criticized for things which I have not said, and are rather distant from my position.
Entropic Man.
Suggest you read Freeman Dyson's comments on modelling:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson
http://edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-science-and-society
My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.
Fewer and fewer scientists enjoy tough fieldwork and more and more prefer the air conditioned comforts of the laboratory.
Freeman Dyson is one of the few scientists who appreciates the mathematical complexity of the real world and our limited understanding of it. Science comes from scientia , to know and we should have the common sense to state what we know and what we do not know.
Fewer and fewer scientists enjoy tough fieldwork and more and more prefer the air conditioned comforts of the laboratory.
HaroldW
My point 4 was aimed past you at those for whom denier is a more appropriate epiphet than sceptic.
Entropic Man
Can you actually identify any deniers on this blog (ie, anyone who thinks CO2 is a complete non-issue)?
Or are you still trying to launch the desparate fraud that a denier is someone who isn't credulous enough to swallow the CAGW meme whole as you do?
Katisha
Mydogsgotnonose and AlecM are the two that first come to mind.
Entropic man (6:33 PM) -
Thanks. Between your and Tomcat's comments, I was beginning to wonder if I had a "Mr Hyde" persona who was posting unbeknownst to me.
Entropic man (Marvel Comic character with psychic powers)
- Warmists allege "The BBC often airs Big Oil funded climate deniers"
I wondered if you could please list some of them who've been on in the last 6 months as I can't think of any .
- Lawson's been on a few times but I wouldnt say a rich 80 year old man opens his mouth for money.
- Bob Carter was on radio once and is paid a small salary reviewing NIPCC reports, but that's not big oil money as it comes via Heartland, who despite allegations of big money from Koch brothers don't actually seem to get much from them. Also he's old.
What's your list ?
Entropic man
So you think maybe 1% of the commenters here are deniers. Perhaps you be good enough to clarify this whenever you next bandy "denier", otherwise people will think you're playing the standard alarmist trickery of trying to mis-portray sceptics as deniers,
The 1% assumes your guesses are right, that is.
Mydogsgotnonose and AlecM, are you deniers of the notion that CO2 may affect the climate?
Entropic Man
You portray Nigel Lawson and Bob Carter as deniers. Are you genuinely that ignorant, or is this just more of your dishonesty in calling sceptics deniers?
Big Oil funded deniers too, eh? Do you ever stop to consider how much of alarmism is Big Government funded - a blatant conflict of interest if ever there was one, given the huge CO2 taxes etc Big Government is hoping to raise? And that such climate 'science' funding is many orders of magnitude larger than whatever Big Oil spends. And that taxpayers are forced to pay for all the CAGW propaganda?
Stewgreen, katiaha
I am glad that 99% of those here do not deny the reality of CO2 driven global warming and climate change.
Entropic Man
Good grief, how long have you been posting here, and on climate blogs in general? Well, never mind, you got there in the end. Yes, deniers are very thin on the ground, and exist mostly as strawmen in the 'minds' of devout CAGW truebelievers.
Your next move forward is to realise that the real argument lies in how serious AGW might be, and when. Decades? Centuries? Millenia? Never? The fact is, noone really knows. The models are off the rails, and getting steadily worse; empirical measurement of the radiation budget is not yet possible; ditto ocean heat. All we have is proxies and hunches.
And of course there is the monumental problem of vested interest and the systemic dishonesty it spawns. All the money going to climate science comes from government, and government stands to draw spectacular advantages from public belief in CAGW - huge new taxes and powers. Hence the predictable 'consensus' amoungst government scientist lackies that CAGW is real and imminent. Hence also the deep-seated dishonesty and bias in government climate science revealed by eg Climategate, the response by most climate scientists to which has been a deafening silence - boldly indicating that lying to 'prove' CAGW is entrenched and considered normal and desirable within government climate science. He who pays the piper.
No, the real argument should be : Can we prevent the climate from changing for the worst? Would the proposed measures have the desired effect? and If we could, and they did, would it be worth it?
My answers are No, no, and no.
Judging by the public, including Greenies', actual behaviour, rather than their words, they agree with me.
Katisha
Now you sound like a conspiracy theorist.
Kellydown
Then we should enjoy our civilisation while it lasts.
I once read of a sword engraved with the motto "Dum vivamus vivamus".
"While we live, let us LIVE"
Entropic man:
Robert Heinlein, "Glory Road". For $3000, you can even get one here, which says. 'The Latin phrase "dum vivimus, vivamus" is believed to have been an Epicurean motto, sometimes attributed to the Latin poet Horace (QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS 65-8 B.C.) and is generally translated as "While we live, let us live!" '
Entropic Man
Oh, dear, the old 'conspiracy' strawman again. Signals your desperation.
You don't need a conspiracy to explain an organisation acting so as to further its own interests - that's just business as usual. Government stands to benefit from climate alarm, so government scientists peddle alarm. No mystery, no conspiracy, it would be surprising if they did anything else.
Fair enough, but you still seem to wish for a doomsday scenario.
I prefer "Dum spiro spero"
"While I breathe, I hope" or more commonly "where there's life, there's hope".
Humanity has consistently triumphed over the odds and the doomsayers, and it will do so again.
Whatever crisis you think faces us or our successors, it will certainly not be solved or averted by taxing industry and demonising cheap energy.